CHILE Archives

29/12/2015by EOS Intelligence EOS Intelligence No Comments

Universal Healthcare Is Needed, but Isn’t Enough – Assessment of Public Health Insurance Targeted at Vulnerable Populations in South America

Ensuring an equal access to healthcare services that are affordable and of decent quality has increasingly been on the agenda of several developed as well as developing countries across the world. Throughout 2014 and 2015, we published a series of articles focusing on the South Asian region, in which we looked into various aspects of the universal healthcare in The Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, followed by our final article in the series presenting holistic view on bridging the health insurance coverage gap in the region. But South Asia is not the only region working to achieve improvements in the functioning of healthcare systems and the universal health insurance coverage. In South America, where universal healthcare is more prevalent and public health insurance coverage gap is narrower than in most Asian nations, several countries have shown a range of approaches to enhance the equality to access and quality of services within their public healthcare. While the approaches differ, the common focus across the region has been to broaden the inclusion of particularly vulnerable groups of populations, such as the poor, elderly, and the unemployed. We are taking a look into public healthcare systems in selected countries to asses their strength in terms of catering to these beneficiaries.

As universal healthcare systems are unrolled and implemented to include large part of the country’s population, regardless of the geography, a well-functioning public health insurance system must focus on two important components: clear classification of its beneficiaries and appropriate structuring of the healthcare services financing.

In order to ensure the right terms of access to the public healthcare system, a country’s population that can benefit from such public insurance is typically segmented into various groups, such as the working population, grey economy workers, poor population, and the senior citizens. The strength of a public health insurance system lies in its ability to effectively target these various groups with dedicated plans and schemes, as these sections of the population may have different healthcare needs.

A public health insurance system is usually financed through government funding and contributions from the employed population (which apart from the formally-employed population can also include informal sector), with most of the public funding directed at subsidizing the healthcare for poor citizens and other underprivileged groups (depending on their proportion in total population). A system with specific coverage targeted at each of these groups is likely to be more efficient in terms of generating required finances, redistributing them according to beneficiary requirements, and in channeling healthcare resources.

South American countries are known for their inclination to provide or to work towards providing universal healthcare to their citizens. While the shared focus across the region has been to improve equity in access and financing of health services, in several cases leading to tangible positive health outcomes of the populations, public health insurance systems in most of these countries have evolved over a period of time to their current state through experimentation and deliberations over various policies to achieve a system that works best in the local scenario.

South American countries adopted various models to develop and enhance their public healthcare systems and, based on respective exigencies, their public health insurance systems are unique. Despite these differences, a broad level country comparison is possible on the basis of some common parameters, to evaluate how healthcare needs of key population groups are addressed in these countries. This comparison indicates the relative strength of public health insurance systems from the target beneficiaries’ point of view.

EOS Perspective

As South American example indicates, the development and implementation of universal healthcare system is not a solution as such, but rather a first step to ensure that healthcare needs of all population groups, especially the vulnerable ones, are well taken care of. Universal healthcare systems with no dedicated, targeted programs oriented specifically at certain groups in terms of type and availability of services, provisions and procedures, access to healthcare facilities, and assigned funding, are likely to be able to address needs of these groups only to a limited extend.

From beneficiary’s point of view, this results in unavailability of certain health services, lower trust in the system, and might simply lead to negative health outcomes of these populations. Given their limited financial abilities, these beneficiaries are unlikely to turn to private sector where their healthcare needs would be met (unless private insurance players, looking to fill gaps, with or without government collaboration, are able to provide cost-effective health insurance coverage, again targeted specifically at these groups).

17/06/2014by EOS Intelligence EOS Intelligence No Comments

A Dragon Unfurls its Wings – How China’s Economic Slowdown Is Rippling Through Emerging Markets

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Almost 10 years ago, Goldman Sachs published a report, in which it predicted Chinese GDP to overtake the USA’s GDP by 2020. Today, this prognosis looks like a far-fetched dream as China has recently been riding a wild economic horse. When Chinese economy was growing, its demand for various products and services contributed to the economic growth of emerging markets across the world. The deteriorating performance of Chinese economy over the past few years appears to have started adversely affecting these markets. Will the emerging markets be able to successfully sustain in future?

China witnessed a spectacular and continued rise of its GDP during major part of last three decades. However, end of 2007 saw a turning point, and the country’s economic growth rate cooled off from 14.2% still in 2007 down to 9.6% in 2008, reaching mere 7.4% in the first quarter of 2014. This single digit growth would be more than satisfactory for a lot of economies. However, for China, which regularly recorded double digit rates, this extended period of slower growth is disappointing, with some calling it as ‘an end of an era’.

For years, China was enjoying relentless economic growth through massive investments, exemplary rise in exports, as well as abundance of labor force which was available at low wages. Due to these factors, economists started referring to China’s economic growth model as an investment-and-export driven model. This model has played a key role in driving exports also from emerging markets such as Latin America, Asia, and Middle East, as there was substantial demand for commodities from China’s end to support its domestic consumption as well as export requirements. With the weakening of foreign demand and internal consumption, China’s export demands have considerably weakened, leading to declining prices of export-related commodities and resulting in an adverse impact on emerging markets’ GDPs.

Is the Slowdown for Real?

China’s economic slowdown has not only been reflected in its modest GDP growth figures, but also in several other negative trends that have been observed. These include a continuous decline in the percentage of fixed-asset investments as a part of China’s GDP. Investments contracted from 24.8% in 2007 to 19.6% in 2013. Reduction of fixed-asset investments is likely to negatively contribute towards a country’s economic slowdown by adversely affecting sectors such as real estate, infrastructure, machinery, metals, and construction.

Moreover, yuan has depreciated against US dollar (with average exchange rate of 7.9 in 2006 down to 6.26 in April 2014). In addition to this, Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which is a composite index of sub-indicators (production level, new orders, supplier deliveries, inventories, and employment level), has plunged from 52.9 in 2006 to 48.3 in April 2014, below the middle value (50), thus indicating some contraction of China’s manufacturing industry. This industry contributes significantly to China’s GDP, therefore, the industry’s deterioration has a direct adverse effect on China’s economy.

This negative twist in China’s economic growth story is believed to be a result of a synergetic effect of various internal and external factors, some of which include:

Over-reliance on abundant supply of low-cost labor. For decades, China has based its growth on production of goods requiring high amount of cheap manual labor. However, as the economy continued growing, the demand for higher wages has increased, pumping up the labor cost. This cost is contributing to the inflation of products’ export prices, which is ultimately translating to a lower demand of Chinese goods.
The focus of Chinese workforce has been shifting from rural agriculture to urban manufacturing. The government has been taking steps to propel this transition in order to boost economic growth, prosperity, and industrialization. As more and more Chinese moved to urban areas, gradually, the transition has started yielding diminishing returns mainly due to saturation in the manufacturing industry.
Europe has also played a villainous role in China’s story. It has been one of China’s largest export markets but has recently been extending a significantly low demand for commodities and products from China. In 2007, the European Union accounted for 20.1% of all the exports from China. This percentage has fallen to 16.3% in 2012.

Chinese Leaders React

The Chinese government is in a reactive mode and has been unveiling a plethora of actions to bolster growth. The overall approach looks conservative in nature with a targeted GDP growth of 7.5% for this year, after recording a growth of 7.7% in 2013.

In an attempt to improve the situation, some of the expected financial and fiscal reforms are in the pipeline. Liberalizing bank deposit rates and relaxing entry barriers for private investment are some of the moves to be implemented by 2020. Various property measures (such as relaxing home purchase rules, providing tax subsidies, or cutting down payments) are planned to be introduced (based on local demands and conditions prevailing in a particular city) in order to balance the property market as a whole. A target of creating 10 million new jobs in Beijing has also been set for 2014. The underlying motive of all the rescue measures is strengthening the Chinese economy’s reliance on domestic consumption and services.

Influence on Emerging Markets

Undoubtedly, swing of the Chinese economy towards consumption and services is expected to considerably affect all the connected economies, several of them being emerging markets economies (EMEs). Commodity producing emerging markets such as Latin America, Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia are likely to be affected. Within this group, metal producers will probably suffer the most, as China had a significant demand for iron ore, steel, and copper during its investment boom phase. Within this subgroup, economies which are running current account deficits are forecast to be more susceptible to the ill-effects of China’s economic slowdown.

As China tilts towards domestic consumption, Latin America has started to witness a dawdling growth as the region’s growth rate dropped from an average of 4.3% in the period of 2004-2011 to 2.6% currently. For instance, as Chile depends heavily on copper exports to sustain its economic expansion, the country has been regularly reporting sluggish growth rates (5.8%, 5.9%, and 5.6% in 2010, 2011, and 2012, respectively) due to the decline in the price of copper, largely fueled by a lower demand from China. In addition to this, Brazil and Mexico are struggling to survive through falling benchmark stock indexes. The fall is mainly due to declining prices of commodities, as exports to China from Brazil and Mexico have weakened.

Middle East will probably register both positive and negative effects of China’s economic slowdown. One of the ill-effects could be reduction in oil prices, from US$140 per barrel in 2008 to approximately US$80 per barrel by the end of 2014, due to China’s lower demand of oil. On the positive side, Middle East is strengthening its position as an attractive region with long-term growth since China is being considered as a slightly less attractive option for investment by a majority of investors. This is mainly due to Middle East’s good infrastructure and accelerated development of industries such as defense, chemical, and automotive, and not only traditionally developed energy and petrochemicals.

The impact on African countries is expected to be negative primarily due to declining commodity prices. As Africa’s growth substantially depends on its exports to China, some African commodity exporters, such as Zambia, Sudan, and Angola, have started to feel the strain as China’s demand for commodities is weakening. This weakened demand has led to lower prices of commodities such as aluminum, copper, and oil, which registered a y-o-y decline by 4%, 9.5%, and 5.4%, respectively in January 2013. Zambia is likely to receive the strongest hit as copper constitutes almost 80% of the country’s total exports and reduction in copper prices could make its current account deficit to account for almost 4% of GDP in 2014.

Effect of China’s economic slowdown will vary from country to country in case of Asia. Countries such as Indonesia and Philippines, which have significant domestic demand, would be less adversely affected as they are less dependent on commodities exports to China. China’s unstable economy has spurred new investments in other growing Asian economies such as Cambodia. India is also likely to benefit from the ability to import oil at lower prices, which are pushed down by China’s weakened demand for oil. At the same time, however, export of cotton and metals such as copper and iron ore from India to China is dampened, adversely affecting India’s economy.

While EMEs have already been witnessing a lower demand from their traditional trading partners such as European Union and the USA, China’s slowdown will be an added burden to their economies.

It’s Touch and Go

It is rather evident that Chinese economic slowdown is having an adverse impact on emerging countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. One can hope that the measures taken by the Chinese leadership to curtail the slowdown will soon start taking effect and gradually lift up the economy, and in doing so, control the extent of damage spilling over many emerging countries and their economies.

In the event that the Chinese economy is unable to recover from this period of slowdown soon, it will continue to be a terrible blow to the economic ambitions of several emerging markets, especially those in Africa and parts of Asia-Pacific, which are heavily reliant on Chinese investment and trade relations.

Simultaneously to absorbing fewer production inputs imported from emerging countries, it is worth noting that China’s role in world economics might start to alter as it transforms to a consumption-led economy. This transformation is likely to slowly increase China’s appetite for imports of products and services, apart from traditional commodities-focused imports. It will be interesting to observe whether and how some of the emerging economies will attempt to satisfy this new Chinese hunger for goods extending beyond simple commodities.

27/06/2013by EOS Intelligence EOS Intelligence No Comments

Future of Global Solar Power Industry – Tense, But There’s Still Hope.

The global solar power industry was always viewed as one based on flawed business principle of artificial sustenance. With prolonged low economic growth, the artificial support base disintegrated, resulting in shutdown of multi-million dollar business across the globe.

Several leading players, such as Siemens, Solar Millennium, First Solar Inc, and SunPower Corp and Suntech Power, have either filed for bankruptcy or pulled out of their loss-making solar power businesses. Others, such as Germany-based Bosch, have decided to wrap-up solar operations at the end of 2013 after having “tried unsuccessfully to achieve a competitive position”.

A 60% fall in solar panel prices between 2010 and early 2013, as well as the rapid expansion of natural gas production in the USA and curtailment of subsidies in the EU were some of the key reasons for growing losses. What is also worth noting is the overcapacity in the market – global production capacity for photovoltaic panels reached about 60 GW in 2012, while expected demand was only 30 GW. Driven by such unsustainable market conditions, no wonder solar power companies went out of business.

Industry experts, however, view the above factors as simply the result of China’s growing dominance in the global solar power industry. Driven by government subsidies, China became the largest solar panel supplier, accounting for 60% of global solar power production capacity. This domination of the industry has, however, come at a price. Amidst growing unhappiness with China-made products leading to local companies becoming uncompetitive, USA imposed a 40% anti-dumping duty in 2012 while in May 2013 the EU imposed provisional duties of 12% (likely to increase to 47% in August) on imports of Chinese-made solar panels. Whether this will deter China or encourage local growth is unknown; this might however have a negative effect of pushing the industry further into crisis.

Beneficiary of the present situation are likely to be manufacturers in countries like Taiwan which are not yet subject to US/EU import tariffs. About 90% of solar cells manufactured in Taiwan are exported to the USA, Europe, and China. Taiwan might also benefit from the EU’s imposition of duties on China made products, driving Chinese investment into Taiwan for setting up manufacturing plants to then directly export to the EU from Taiwan without having to pay the duties. Recent activities of some Chinese companies have indicated Turkey and South Africa being possible destinations for setting up manufacturing units.

The Chinese will find ways to get their products into the US and EU markets, even if it means moving their operations to Taiwan or other countries which are not subject to the high duties. The real issue, however, is the state of the global solar industry – with some of the major players shutting down operations and funding of solar power depleting, is the end of the road? We doubt it.

There is still hope for the solar power industry, largely driven by favorable policy measures in emerging Asian and Latin American countries. The first half of 2013 witnessed solar power investments in several countries, including Kuwait, South Africa and Chile. The industry received a major boost from Middle-East when Saudi Arabia announced a US$100 billion investment plan in 2012, to generate one-third of the country’s electricity demand through solar energy. Although current demand in these emerging markets is relatively low and may take about 10-15 years to develop into a sizeable market, the scope for growth is immense.

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